


Timer Tale

by welkinalauda (iiii)



Series: Salvaged from Tumblr [5]
Category: Tumblr - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 21:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16961802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iiii/pseuds/welkinalauda
Summary: “If a clock could count down to the moment you meet your soul mate, would you want to know?”





	Timer Tale

[12/27/14](http://welkinalauda.tumblr.com/post/106369477914/drst-ishkaqwiaidurugnul-vonmunsterr)

 

My timer came in at puberty, just like everyone else’s.  The countdown was set for my sophomore year of college.  Perfectly standard and ordinary.  After the second time I was raped (this time an uncle, who said I’d understand later just how fucking boring it was to be with the same One forever) I noticed my clock wasn’t keeping good time any more.  It was slowing in fits and gaps, sometimes almost up to speed, other times almost stopped.  

No one else noticed.

I went to college.  First thing, of course, freshman goddamn orientation.  Perky, gregarious people insisting that everyone share their stories, volunteer things about themselves, compare wrist timers.  That’s when I realized that my clock had been fading.  The numbers were still there, still irregularly advancing, but noticeably paler than everyone else’s.  My roommate found that unnerving.  She kept a close eye on my numbers.  When she realized my clock was losing time, she went to Housing and got herself shifted to a different room.  She told everyone who would listen exactly why she moved, too.  So I got a double-single, and Housing told me to find someplace off-campus for the next school year. 

It faded even faster once I was living alone.  These days the numbers are just a smudge, too faint to tell if it’s still counting down at all.

When I - rather belatedly - found the sj web, I thought that the community of outcasts there would welcome me.  And… not so much.  The zero-activists’ rhetoric is all about how there’s nothing wrong with being zero because they were born that way.  Me, though, I was born ‘normal’ and became broken.  They’ve got problems of their own, so my fragility is my problem, they say.  I say, we’re all getting shunned because of these stupid timers, isn’t that enough in common?  Shush, they say.  I might muddy the message and derail their liberation.

 

I wonder sometimes about the person I was originally counting down to meet.  Did his timer come ticking down to 0000-00-00-00 and I wasn’t there?  Did I pass him by that day, all unknowing?  Or did his timer stutter and fade like mine, for no reason he knew?  

Maybe someone broke him, too.

I wonder, but I’m afraid what I might find if were to go looking.

I hope he’s all right.


End file.
